No Shrine is the habitation of the true and living God. “Will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You! How much less this house!” -1 Kings 8:27. We must repent of the concept of a local deity inhabiting a sacred place. Nimrod institutionalized this evil thinking at the tower of Babel. A sacred Shrine was constructed and “worship” was localized there.
It is a Babylonian idolatrous tradition that spread throughout the entire world when God scattered languages from that tower. Every culture carried Nimrod’s traditions with them: ancestral traditions of a sacred Shrine, a ruling Oracle priest, oral tradition directing ritual worship, and required sacrifices.
His was the first building erected that was devoted to religious purposes, a “tower whose top will reach into heaven” –Genesis 11:4. Before that, men could worship the true God anywhere that earth or stones could be found according to Divine direction [Exodus 20:24-26]. And earth and stones can be found anywhere. Then, all were priests; all could worship God in Spirit and truth apart from Shrines.
But with Nimrod, everything changed. Worship in Spirit was quenched by external ritual. Worship in truth became supplanted by man-devised traditions and decrees. Now men must travel to his “sacred” location in order to “worship.” There they meet a custodian/priest who “connects” them to the god resident in that Shrine. Oral tradition from that Oracle priest directs their every religious ceremony.
And where there is a Shrine, there must be a priest. Where there is a priest, there must be sacrifice. Where there is sacrifice, there must be payment. This is the legacy of Nimrod to all the tribes of earth.
In true Christianity, there are no sacred totems: particular animals, places, objects, or plants that have a special brotherly relationship with believers. Particular trees, groves, rocks, streams, animals, or mountains and high places are examples of totems in African Traditional Religion.
“Prayer Mountains,” or “Prayer Houses,” or “Sanctuaries,” and church buildings have become Christian totems in the minds of many. These are “Christian” Shrines. But they are not holy places. God does not inhabit them in any other way than He inhabits any part of His creation. God is everywhere.
“Where can I go from Your Spirit, or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there” –Psalm 139:7,8.
Church buildings are not the house of God, neither are they “holy places.” Only true believers in the Lord Jesus are “the house of God” –Eph.2:19, and His “holy temple” –Eph.2:21 in whom He dwells. “We are the temple of the living God; just as God said: ‘I will dwell in them’” -2 Corinthians 6:16,17.
Only people can be holy, not bricks and mortar, timbers and stones. God’s house is built, not with earthly, external things, but with “living stones, being built up as spiritual house” -1 Peter 2:5.
Burning candles in the “sanctuary” does not indicate that God is present there any more than He is outside on the street. “Cleansing” the environment and inviting the Holy Spirit as a welcome guest in worship meetings does not “sanctify” that building. God is not a local deity dwelling in a local Shrine.
It is a matter of historical record that the church from the time of Christ did not gather in buildings devoted to religious worship. There were no church buildings, sanctuaries, or cathedrals for some 250 years. The NT church simply met in homes as recorded in Romans 16:5, Philemon 2, Acts 16:40, etc.
“The Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands; as the prophet says: ‘Heaven is My throne, and earth is the footstool of My feet; what kind of house will you build for Me?’ says the Lord” -Acts 7:48,49.
“Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there I am in the midst of them” –Matthew 18:20. Jesus said that the hour “now is when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth…neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem” –John 4:23,21. That hour is now.
Jesus dictates the terms of worship in the church that He is building. Custodians of Shrines dictate the terms of worship in their own priest-crafted traditions. They are two different things altogether.
We must repent; in the church that Jesus is building, there are no Shrines.